Zhang was born during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China, when intellectuals and capitalists were targeted and forced to stay at re-education camps. Her parents were immigrants from Burma who came to Beijing and later separated. When Zhang was eight, her mother was finally given permission to enter Beijing where she started working as a translator in a library. Unable to afford even the basic necessities, Zhang slept at her mother’s workplace, using dictionaries as a headrest. At fourteen, she moved to unfamiliar Hong Kong and found unrewarding jobs at various factory locations. After struggling for five years, she had enough money to purchase a one-way ticket to London. She joined University of Sussex on an undergrad scholarship and did her master’s in economics from Cambridge University. Thereafter, she joined Goldman Sachs as an investment banker, but soon realised that the role was not as satisfying as she had earlier envisaged. She was lured by China’s growing idealism and economic reforms and returned to the country. She met Pan Shiyi, a young idealist working in the Real Estate sector aiming to liberalise China through his business venture and changing the dull and boring landscape of the country. Sharing similar dreams, the two got married and created SOHO China, which started out as an indebted firm and gradually prepared the groundwork for prime development. After two decades of collective blueprint formations, the company has managed to transform Beijing into a futuristic capital with enormous skyscrapers and personified modern development.